Brave and Awake

Twelve days out of the month, for twenty-four hours at a time, I put on my superhero outfit. When I’m wearing my outfit, I help people who are sick and sometimes dying. I cut people out of cars that have been crunched like a Milky Way candy wrapper. I run into buildings that are churning out wild black smoke and shooting up crackling orange flames, while frantic people are running out. Sometimes I’m perched at the top of a one-hundred-foot aerial ladder operating a nozzle that is shooting out water under immense pressure at one thousand gallons per minute. Other times I am squeezing myself under a turned over big rig in the mud, patching up a fuel leak. I love my job. I love helping people as best I can. Even in the blackened grime of heat, smoke and tears—I love all of it. At home, I slip happily into another favorite outfit—my mom gear, which includes, but is not limited, to hand wipes, extra Kleenex, water, and cell phone. As I shuttle to and from soccer practice and dentist appointments in the cozy comfort of my aqua sweatpants and hoodie, the outfit of my role of mom and wife, my husband does “the guy stuff.” He uses his power tools, invents projects, builds the kids a tree house, and fixes the cars. Thank God he does all those things; things would fall apart if he didn’t. At home, I’m not even sure where the screwdriver and hammer live. And then in yet another outfit—my super soft Capri-length yoga pants and maybe my sun-colored tie-dyed tank—there are the precious moments on the weekends that find me weaving in and out of experiences on the great big hardwood dance floor, through chaotic rhythms and lyrical melodies. On the dance floor, tribal beats speak their ancient tongues and rock my soul. Chance meetings, mystical experiences, and shifts in consciousness appear like random yet perfect pixels of color on an artist’s canvas. In this outfit, my life becomes the dance. And I dance my life with abandon. At home, I’ve been known to jump at a spider sighting. I marvel that when I’m wearing my superhero outfit, I don’t even flinch as I crawl under a concrete pile of rubble among dead rats and other unidentifiable things. In my superhero outfit, I can command an emergency scene, telling bystanders to stand back and get out of harm’s way. People listen. At home in my aqua sweats, how is it that I can’t get even one disinterested five-year-old to pick up his toys without me telling him at least three times? Sometimes in my superhero outfit, when I see a lot of pain and suffering, I wonder about “cards dealt,” and the hopelessness that can appear in life. And then miraculously, when I’m wearing my funky, flared-out yoga pants and dancing my ecstatic moves, I have moments of sublime clarity, and I know that life is, actually, a perfect dance—in all the ways it shows up. Out of all my changing outfits and roles, it is the soot-dusted gear and helmet that garner the most attention, and people often tell me I must be very brave. However, the bravest thing I have ever done has nothing to do with fighting raging fires, extricating people out of crashed cars, or working medical emergencies. And even for all the courage that motherhood requires, in fact, the bravest thing I have ever done is to listen to the inner urgings of my own heart. As I have learned to listen to the pull of my heart during my life, the latch has unlocked and the door to my ever-evolving, own authentic becoming has swung wide open. How did I go from an unhappy account executive in a high profile public relations firm, to a woman decked out in fire gear playing the hero in a man’s world, to an overwhelmed mom balancing her act, to an ecstatic dancer and believer in the inherent perfection and magic of life? When I truly listened to my heart’s urgings, my life began to transform. The truths I have stumbled upon, along my journey, and the experiences that precipitated them are what this story is about.